Good things in Mushing

[Testament]

@Tez I too have heard good things about that game, and I wish all the success with it.

[farfalla]

@Tez Once when I was camping on the beach there, I was walking back from the bathroom in the middle of the night and it was real dark and suddenly there was a pony three feet from my face and it was surprisingly terrifying. Ponies are still large, it turns out. Anyway the pony just kept eating grass and ignoring me as I ooched past.

[Tez]

@farfalla I WOULD HAVE SCREAMED

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@farfalla Kind of wish I could go see the place in real life. Chincoteague’s facebook groups have become my daytime TV. People track the ponies, they know their names, their histories. It’s hilarious and adorable.

… In real life, though, I’ve only got my own two ponies. One’s an 1800 pounds jutland draft and the other’s a feral much like the Chincoteague ponies.

[farfalla]

@Tez I think I stopped breathing lol

[Snackness]

@farfalla I was walking down a path to a little beach with my husband (@tsar of course) and one of them just stepped onto the path in front of me. We just froze until it moved on!

[farfalla]

@Snackness lol yeah they truly dgaf about people

[L. B. Heuschkel]

This is where I ask for a picture to identify your ponies. Because seriously, they spend a lot of time in those groups doing exactly that. Also, the most famous stallion is currently injured and resting it up in the park on Chincoteague and and

… anyhow, yeah. What’s got me down a bit has nothing to do with this particular game. More a bleh in general at how there’s always one or two people in the hobby who seem to spread meh wherever they look.

[Snackness]

@L-B-Heuschkel I haven’t been there for 8 years, but my aunt and uncle used to live there and we visited a fair bit. It’s a very neat little place.

[farfalla]

@L-B-Heuschkel This was in the northern herd, but I don’t have a photo given it was the middle of the night and I was terrified. But yeah, I love it there. I have pictures of me as a small child petting or feeding the ponies, back in the 80s when no one told you not to. Whoops.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Snackness We picked it for a game setting based on a number of criteria: Must be touristy (to explain why people are used to seeing other people being weird, tourists, yanno), must be isolated enough to be a small community but not so isolated that you can’t get to a large city in a few hours, must have a climate that doesn’t make you miserable to write about.

As I recall, the other top candidate was a location off Lake Michigan.

Our game isn’t about Chincoteague per se but it has turned out to be a lot easier to create an atmosphere when you can literally Google maps your way around. And it doesn’t hurt that we have barrier islands much like it here in Denmark too, on a more personal level.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@farfalla I mean… That’s from today. XD

(The pony is Patricia Irene).

[Tez]

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Good things in Mushing:

… anyhow, yeah. What’s got me down a bit has nothing to do with this particular game. More a bleh in general at how there’s always one or two people in the hobby who seem to spread meh wherever they look.

You’re right. There are always energy sucks, unfortunately. Sometimes it is overt and toxic; sometimes it is a more covert sort of meh.

But I think that – as a hobby, as a culture, as a community – we have become better about guarding our time. About building our boundaries. ABOUT NOT BEING GIGANTIC SPONGES, @tsar, THIS IS A CALLOUT POST.

I gotta say that seeing Arx just be like ‘yeah you know what? this person isn’t building a community we want, please leave’ was like big shocked pikachu moment. Like, OH MY GOD? WE CAN DO THAT? We DON’T have to spend two years carefully assembling threads of evidence of bad behavior for an air-tight case???

Even being smarter about our boundaries, time, and emotional energy, though, they can still be EXTREMELY draining and it is hard to always recharge that energy when there is so much else going on in the world to challenge replenishment. So. I’m sorry. Uh. Have some ponies:

(And now you must identify them.)

[farfalla]

@L-B-Heuschkel hahahah. the campsites all have pony-proof boxes under the picnic tables that you have to store all food in, like bear boxes.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@farfalla said in Good things in Mushing:

@L-B-Heuschkel hahahah. the campsites all have pony-proof boxes under the picnic tables that you have to store all food in, like bear boxes.

Begging the question of who’s smarter – a pony or a bear?

Knowing my pinto feral pony, I know who I’m voting for.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Tez said in Good things in Mushing:

I gotta say that seeing Arx just be like ‘yeah you know what? this person isn’t building a community we want, please leave’ was like big shocked pikachu moment. Like, OH MY GOD? WE CAN DO THAT? We DON’T have to spend two years carefully assembling threads of evidence of bad behavior for an air-tight case???

We absolutely will punt people for ruining the community or trying to. No mercy and no need to build a watertight case, this is not a courtroom.

Unfortunately, though, being thoroughly dislikeable and a constant drain on my patience is not a banishable offence.

(And now you must identify them.)

… Well, the white one with the red head is named Wildfire, and I think the palomino pinto is Misty III, but… XD

[Testament]

@L-B-Heuschkel I’ve never had to ban someone from my game as of yet and I consider myself lucky for the fact that these problems haven’t cropped up as of yet. I’ve worked very hard on created an area where the players feel safe and don’t have to worry about harassment of any kind. This has allowed some players to really take that comfort into coming into their own, something that I’m proud of.

It’s going to happen, eventually, now that the game is more open, that someone is going to come in and try to assert themselves in it. Considering the size of playebase, I feel like they’ll be more willing to call that out when it happens.

If it happens, it happens, but I won’t hesitate to remove that presence if that’s what needs to happen.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Testament As you shouldn’t. You don’t need a courtroom case to tell somebody to get off your ship. It’s your damned ship.

A safe environment is crucial. We haven’t really had any big admin issues on Keys in our one year and I pray that it continues to stay that way. The issue I’m struggling with is unfortunately a personal one and probably not solvable with kicking somebody out. Bloody sucks, though.

I like to think that players themselves are invested in a safe environment – that community building also means creating a place where people feel safe approaching staff and each other with problems. Ideally, an argument or conflict gets settled between players themselves without anyone having to call in the admins in the first place.

[farfalla]

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Good things in Mushing:

Unfortunately, though, being thoroughly dislikeable and a constant drain on my patience is not a banishable offence.

Sure it is. Being a negative addition to the game in whatever way is bannable if you want it to be. There are games I don’t play on because a specific person plays there, and I sure think the game would be better for more people if that person was banned.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@farfalla said in Good things in Mushing:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Good things in Mushing:

Unfortunately, though, being thoroughly dislikeable and a constant drain on my patience is not a banishable offence.

Sure it is. Being a negative addition to the game in whatever way is bannable if you want it to be. There are games I don’t play on because a specific person plays there, and I sure think the game would be better for more people if that person was banned.

That’s a fair point. I’m not quite ready to exert that level of leverage – in part probably because this is a personal issue, and we’ve all heard whisper campaigns and gossip about past games where staff dealt unfairly with people because they had a personal stake. We’ll see what happens. After all, life has its bumps and then it goes on.